Sunday, June 22, 2008

More Jose Ortiz please!

In the blogosphere there is only little information published on some comic art masters or illustration giants. One of them is Jose Ortiz Moya. Born in 1932, Ortiz is a virtuoso draftsman and he is incredibly skilled in the pen & ink medium. Ortiz's style is easily recognizable: daring strokes of ink and a heavy use of black segments. In his best work, Ortiz has only a handful of equals.

The Comiclopedia of Lambiek.net gives the following biography:

"When he was very young, José Ortiz Moya won a tournament organized by the Spanish magazine Chicos. This launched him into the comic scene, and he started producing numerous pocket-sized comics, like 'Capitan Don Nadie', 'Dan Barry el Terremoto' and 'El Duque Negro'. From 1959 on, he created 'Sigur el Vikingo' and 'Johnny Fogata', and in 1962, for the English newspaper Daily Express, he made 'Carolynn Baker'.In the seventies, he ventured onto the American market with several horror stories, published by Warren. At this time, his collaboration with writer Antonio Segura started. Together, they created titles such as 'Jack el Destripador', 'Morgan', 'El Hombre' and 'Burton y Cyb', all throughout the eighties. Ortiz was present in Spanish magazines like 1984, Creepy, Metropol, K. O. Comics, Zona 84, Totem and Cimoc all through the 1980s until the mid-1990s. He also cooperated with the Italian publisher Bonelli, illustrating series like 'Ken Parker' and 'Magico Vento'."

The quality of Ortiz' work varies greatly through time and in between stories, and I suspect this has something to do with working under tight deadlines. In the English Wikipedia one can read that "Ortiz would remain with Warren until 1983 and drew more stories for that company (approximately 120) than any other artist." A certain haste in drawing is certainly evident in Ortiz' work from that period. A few years earlier, in 1975, Ortiz published together with Selecciones Illustrada the wonderful story "Le petit sauvage". This story is masterfully illustrated! Could it be that perhaps Ortiz worked on this story for his amusement? The art is certainly more polished than in his other stories. Luckily the album can be bought at almost every comic convention (search between the secondhand cheap albums).Here are some Ortiz pictures...and although hastily drawn, they are little jewels!